Proba’s Eve as Pandora: Hesiodic Echoes in the Cento

Abstract

Abstract This paper argues that in her Cento Proba, who shares the Church Fathers’ unfavorable view on women, alters the account of Genesis to increase Eve’s responsibility for the woes of humankind. To accomplish this goal, she chooses from the Vergilian corpus specific lines that enable her to establish a connection between Eve and the utterly negative figure of Pandora as she is portrayed in Hesiod’s Theogony and, above all, Works and Days . In parallel, Adam is associated to foolish Epimetheus and God plays the role of Zeus.